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Is it smart business though? Once disclosed it provides future purchasers with a strong reason to avoid your products. Who wants to spend millions on trainsets that could become unserviceable in the event that the seller goes out of business or makes some mistake in authorizing service centres or gets into a dispute with us over another matter?

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It can be smart business if the probability of it being disclosed is low enough. Using fake numbers as an example, if you can make an extra $1 million on repairs and will suffer $100 million in fines / lost business if it becomes known, as long as the probability of it becoming known is less than 1%, it's a net positive expected value.

it's just tight-rope walking at that point. If your company has sufficient leverage within the market they can get away with murder.

see: John Deere

Ahem... Boeing 737 MAX, which was literal murder.

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